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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Altérités dans l'expatriation lointaine : dialogisme des imaginaires collectifs et des discours individuels

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description

In a postcolonial context, this research looks into the itineraries of French expatriates, from a former colonial empire, in Malaysia, a former British colony. The autobiographical discourses of the French expatriates, blogs, research writings and research interviews, are analyzed in terms of the articulation between individual experiences and collective representations, interrogating how experiencing alterity, as well as writing or speaking about it, participates in the construction of identities. The discourse analysis is dialogical and takes in consideration a larger field of discourses: the centuries‐long orientalist discourse as theorized by Bill Ashcroft, Tzvetan Todorov or Edward Said. Critical discourse analysis defines this research from a methodological standpoint as well as in its aims: it focuses upon a social problem (as well as individual and personal) which has a semiotic aspect, to produce knowledge which can lead to emancipatory change. With this aim, the analysis focuses upon the contexts (postcolonialism, orientalism and modern mobilities) and the dialogisms, as well as the corpus discourses. The critical and interdiscursive analysis aims to question the order of discourse, its hegemony and prescriptive value. The knowledge hence produced can lead to emancipatory change in the postcolonial discourse on alterity and identities.